U.S. District Judge Henry H. Kennedy, who in June 2005 ordered the Bush administration to protect “all evidence and information regarding the torture, mistreatment and abuse of detainees” at Guantanamo Bay, has now ordered the administration to explain why it destroyed two videotapes of such treatment just five months later.

Sen. Chris Dodd is preparing to take to the Senate floor with a filibuster to thwart the legislative advancement of the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act if it doesn’t include his proposed amendment, co-sponsored with Sen. Russ Feingold, that would prevent the Bush administration from retroactively letting big telecom companies off the hook for allowing the government to conduct warrantless surveillance on their networks.

Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah marked the first day of Hajj by pardoning the so-called Qatif girl, who was sentenced to 200 lashes and six months in prison because she was traveling with a man when she was attacked and gang-raped. The Saudi justice minister said that, despite the pardon, the king was “convinced and sure that the verdicts were fair.”

It’s perhaps the biggest single-day take in campaign history: $6 million raised in one day by Ron Paul supporters not affiliated with the campaign. The so-called “money bomb” was scheduled to coincide with the anniversary of the Boston Tea Party.

Sen. Joseph Lieberman, a self-described “Independent Democrat,” is expected to turn his back on the Democratic candidates to endorse John McCain for president. It’s a fitting move for the George Bush apologist, who was rejected by the primary voters of his own party for his unabashed support of the war.

Despite touting increased stability in the outer provinces as proof of the success of the “surge,” the U.S. military is about to abandon those regions altogether. The Pentagon’s new strategy for dealing with a reduction of forces in Iraq is essentially to pull back to Baghdad and hope for the best.

Turkey has dramatically ramped up its cross-border campaign against Kurds in Iraq with an airstrike involving as many as 50 warplanes. The Turkish military says the assault was aimed at Kurdish rebels seeking refuge in Iraq and not “people living in northern Iraq or local groups not engaged in enemy activity.”

It’s hard to limit oneself to just a couple dozen names, slogans and events representing the worst of the Bush years, but that’s what the folks at The Huffington Post have done for a postering campaign designed to promote Democratic candidates and shame Team Bush for its transgressions.

Newly installed Attorney General Michael Mukasey swiftly shot down requests by House and Senate Judiciary Committee leaders, as well as other members of Congress, for information about the Justice Department’s investigation of the CIA tape destruction fiasco—because the department would seem “subject to political influence.” Oh.